https://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Climate-change-skeptics-work-closely-with-EPA-12946534.php Source:   By Ellen Knickmeyer. Associated Press. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — Newly released emails show senior Environmental Protection Agency officials working closely with a conservative group that dismisses climate change to rally like-minded people for public hearings on science and global warming and tout Administrator Scott Pruitt’s stewardship of the agency. John Konkus, EPA’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs, repeatedly reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute, according to the emails. ...Follow-up emails show Konkus and the Heartland Institute mustering scores of potential invitees known for rejecting scientific warnings of man-made climate change, including from groups such as Plants Need CO2, the Right Climate Stuff and Junk Science. The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who shar

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-regulators-approve-423-million-for-12945151.php Source:   By Kate Galbraith, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: The California Air Resources Board voted Friday to allocate $423 million in funding from the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal settlement to a variety of clean transportation projects. The funding is a slice of the $1.2 billion that California is getting from the settlement. It is intended to mitigate emissions of harmful air pollutants called nitrogen oxides from the polluting diesel vehicles, many of which have been taken off the road after Volkswagen bought them back. The funding is mostly aimed at cleaning up heavy-duty vehicles, such as buses and trucks. It includes: ...$130 million for zero-emission shuttle buses, school buses and transit • $90 million for zero-emission, heavy-duty freight and drayage trucks • $70 million for port equipment and other marine projects • $60 million for combustion port equipment

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/byds-electric-bus-woes-threaten-to-tarnish-the-broader-industry Source:  By Julian Spector, Green Tech Media. Excerpt: ...Recent news complicates the rosy narrative that electric buses are sailing to total domination of the public transit segment. ...Los Angeles Times...Journalist Paige St. John uncovered extensive problems with L.A. Metro’s efforts to deploy electric buses from BYD, a massive Chinese firm with a factory in Lancaster, California. ...The story reports BYD buses ran out of charge before their advertised range, wouldn’t start and had trouble climbing hills in downtown L.A. ...What remains to be seen is whether the revelations change public attitudes toward BYD itself, or electric buses in general. ...“That was an article about a company, but the headline was about a  category,” Ryan Popple, CEO of electric bus maker Proterra, told GTM. “I hope that people don't paint a broad brush over the whole category.” ...In winning

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/decoding-weather-machine.html Source:   By Gina Varamo, Outreach Coordinator, NOVA. Excerpt: On April 18th, NOVA aired this climate change documentary ...two hour special takes a deep dive into our climate machine to explain why scientists agree that our climate is changing, how climate change will impact our daily lives, and how we can be resilient—and even thrive-- in the face of this enormous change. ...[NOVA is] looking for partners that are interested in bringing a screening of Decoding the Weather Machine to their community. NOVA will provide your school or organization with a free DVD of Decoding the Weather Machine and a screening guide for planning your event every step of the way, from advertising to execution! It includes more information about the climate science discussed in the film, as well as sample discussion questions and panel formats to inspire community conversations once the film is over.  If you’re interested in hosting a co

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/business/energy-environment/offshore-wind-massachusetts.html Source:   By Stanley Reed and Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...New Bedford hopes to soon be the operations center for the first major offshore wind farm in the United States, bringing billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs to the town and other ports on the East Coast. ...Offshore wind farms have increasingly become mainstream sources of power in Northern Europe, and are fast becoming among the cheapest sources of electricity in countries like Britain and Germany. Those power sources in those two countries already account for more than 12 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity. But the United States has largely not followed that lead, with just one relatively small offshore wind farm built off the coast of Rhode Island. Currently, the entire country’s offshore wind capacity is just 30 megawatts. ...“We could run the whole East Coast on offshore wind,” sai

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/climate/rice-global-warming.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — When scientists want to figure out how climate change might disrupt the world’s food supplies, they often explore how rising temperatures could shift growing seasons or how more frequent droughts could damage harvests. In recent years, though, researchers have begun to realize that the extra carbon dioxide that humanity is pumping into the atmosphere isn’t just warming the planet, it’s also making some of our most important crops less nutritious by changing their chemical makeup and diluting vitamins and minerals. Now, a new study has found that rice exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide contains lower amounts of several important nutrients. The potential health consequences are large, given that there are already billions of people around the world who don’t get enough protein, vitamins or other nutrients in their daily diet.... 

http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/22/closing-coal-oil-power-plants-leads-to-healthier-babies/ Source:   By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Shuttering coal- and oil-fired power plants lowers the rate of preterm births in neighboring communities and improves fertility, according to two new University of California, Berkeley, studies. The researchers compared preterm births and fertility before and after eight power plants in California closed between 2001 and 2011, including San Francisco’s Hunters Point plant in 2006. Overall, the percentage of preterm births – babies born before 37 weeks of gestation – dropped from 7 percent in a year-long period before plant closure to 5.1 percent for the year after shutdown. Rates for non-Hispanic African-American and Asian women dropped even more: from 14.4 percent to 11.3 percent. ...The 20-25 percent drop in preterm birthrates is larger than expected, but consistent with other studies linking birth problems to air pollution around po

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6390/707.full Source:   By Joel W Ager, Alexei A. Lapkin, Science. Excerpt: The conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuels and chemicals using renewable energy is a potential pathway to mitigate increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and acidification of the oceans.... In a process that is essentially the reverse of combustion and is analogous to photosynthesis, CO2 can be electrochemically reduced to hydrocarbons by using renewable power sources such as wind and solar.... This process would not compete with direct use of renewable energy as electricity, as the objective is to store excess energy for later use. On page 783 of this issue, Dinh et al. (3) show that ethylene can be generated selectively via electrochemical CO2 reduction at rates that could yield a technologically feasible process. The thermodynamics of reducing CO2 are similar to those of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, which has been done commercially wit

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/climate/alaska-climate-change.html Source:    By Brad Plummer, The New York Times. F Excerpt: WASHINGTON — In the Trump era, it has mainly been blue states that have taken the lead on climate change policy, with liberal strongholds like California and New York setting ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Now, at least one deep-red state could soon join them: Alaska, a major oil and gas producer, is crafting its own plan to address climate change. Ideas under discussion include cuts in state emissions by 2025 and a tax on companies that emit carbon dioxide. While many conservative-leaning states have resisted aggressive climate policies, Alaska is already seeing the dramatic effects of global warming firsthand, making the issue difficult for local politicians to avoid. The solid permafrost that sits beneath many roads, buildings and pipelines is starting to thaw, destabilizing the infrastructure above. At least 31 coastal towns and

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/climate/air-conditioning.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...there is growing concern that as other countries adopt America’s love of air-conditioners, the electricity used to power them will overburden electrical grids and increase planet-warming emissions. The number of air-conditioners worldwide is predicted to soar from 1.6 billion units today to 5.6 billion units by midcentury, according to a report issued Tuesday by the International Energy Agency. If left unchecked, by 2050 air-conditioners would use as much electricity as China does for all activities today. Greenhouse gas emissions released by coal and natural gas plants when generating electricity to power those air-conditioners would nearly double, from 1.25 billion tons in 2016 to 2.28 billion tons in 2050, the report says. Those emissions would contribute to global warming, which could further heighten the demand for air-conditioning. Right now air-c

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-quietly-cancels-nasa-research-verifying-greenhouse-gas-cuts Source:   By Paul Voosen, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...In recent years... satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet's flows of carbon. Now, President Donald Trump's administration has quietly killed the CMS, Science has learned. The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, says Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University's Center for International Environment and Resource Policy in Medford, Massachusetts. "If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement," she says. ...The White Ho

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/business/energy-environment/california-solar-power.html Source:   By Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: SACRAMENTO — Long a leader and trendsetter in its clean-energy goals, California took a giant step on Wednesday, becoming the first state to require all new homes to have solar power. The new requirement, to take effect in two years, brings solar power into the mainstream in a way it has never been until now. ...“This adoption of these standards represents a quantum leap,” Bob Raymer, senior engineer for the California Building Industry Association, said during the public comments before the vote. “You can bet every state will be watching to see what happens.” ...California’s move is by far the boldest and most consequential of any. California law requires at least 50 percent of the state’s electricity to come from noncarbon-producing sources by 2030.  ...The building-code change is one dimension of a broader transition away from centralize

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/climate/bears-not-hibernating.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...as climate change leads to warmer winters, later falls and earlier springs — which can disrupt both food supplies and biological rhythms — American black bears are changing their hibernation routines, scientists say. In some cases, bears are not hibernating at all, staying awake all winter. In others, bears are waking from their slumber too early. For every one degree Celsius that minimum temperatures increase in winter, bears hibernate for six fewer days, a study found last fall. As global temperatures continue to rise, by the middle of the century black bears may stay awake between 15 and 39 more days per year, the study said. ...“Over the years we’ve had reports of bears hibernating under people’s decks and in their garages and stuff, so we would have to wake them up in order to get them out,” Dr. Wynn-Grant said. “But until this year, I had nev